Ancient Law in Modern Life.
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would hardly manage to exist. But among what is now a Russian province, the Usthe Hindus of to-day, as among the ancient setes still place food and drink upon the Greeks and Romans, the extinction of a tombs, that their dead may not suffer from family is a much more serious affair. It af hunger (Dareste, Etudes d'Histoire du fects the dead as well as the living. Take Droit, p. 137); yet the Ossetes have been the case already referred to. It was argued Christians since the fourth century. But the that if a man were allowed to give away his Anglo-Saxon race has travelled so far from only son, his own death would leave no rep the faith of its forefathers that we have most resentative of the family to perform the pri of us forgotten all about it. vate family rites. The consequence would And we are apt to forget that in this, as in be that he would be left to languish in put so many other things, the Hindus are to or hell. This might seem a personal matter. day where we were thousands of years ago. as to which the father ought to be allowed to In their present we have a picture of our choose for himself. If he chose put with his own remote past. In India we see all round eyes open, why should anyone interfere? us institutions- and customs which in Europe But unfortunately, he would nut be the only were extinct before history began. A case one to suffer. The cessation of the family about ancestor worship in the law reports rites would prevent the flow of promotion startles us in much the same way as if we among previous generations of the dead. If were to put up a pterodactyl in the Park. One of the most fruitful ideas of modern a man dulv performs the rites his dead father is freed from put, his grandfather becomes science is that our complex, civilized society immortal, and his great-grandfather is car has grown out of a simple and uncivilized ried up to the solar system. If the rites are society, and that when we observe and study not performed the foundations of this pos the customs of savage peoples we are as it thumous happiness are dashed away, and were beholding our own far away ancestors. Mons. Paul Bourget, writing of his travels the legitimate expectations of deserving an cestors are rudely disappointed. All this, in America, said what struck him as most except perhaps the rise to the solar system, instructive was to pass in a few hours from would have sounded quite reasonable and the simple and elementary conditions of a natural to a Roman in the early days of the new settlement to the complex civilization city. All the Aryan peoples, and many non- of the Eastern cities. In looking through Aryan peoples, too, start with attaching pro the windows of the cars, as we travel from found importance to perpetuating the family. West to East, we see the history of America Ancestor-worship is the most universal of unrolled before us. And one who did not early religions. It appeals to human nature, know anything about the primitive bush for the benefits are not all on one side. The might think the simple log village of the man who treats his ancestors well will not West was the starting point. We are liable be overlooked by them, and many a stroke to make the same mistake in our study of of apparent luck may be due to their pious mankind. The religious ideas and the social care. We find this form of faith among customs of the Hindus strike us as bearing peoples extremely remote from each other the marks of a hoary age. They may repre in space and time; among modern Hindus. sent, so to speak, the views of our grand ancient Greeks and Romans, Chinese, Jap fathers. But if we want to find out the views anese and Arabs, without attempting to of our great-great-grandfathers, it is not to enumerate them all. So deeply rooted are the polite and subtle-wilted Hindu that we these old beliefs that in some out of the way must look, but rather to races at the stage corners of the world fifteen hundred years of progress reached by the tribes of Central of Christianity has not destroyed them. Africa or by the Pacific Islanders. It is in India that we find still surviving Among the mountains of the Caucasus, in
